Five things we don’t know about North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, who is 40 years old.

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January 08, 2024, 6:06 am

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un turns 40 this Monday. Or at least that’s what most experts and sources believe, establishing his year of birth as 1984.

by the BBC

The grandson of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, he became one of the youngest leaders in history when he took power in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

The third of the Kim dynasty, which ruled with an iron fist under the communist system for more than seven decades, has since established itself as an important figure in geopolitics in the Northeast Asian region and globally.

A constant driver of his father’s “Songun” policy, which prioritized military development, he has a nuclear arsenal that the regime considers a guarantee of its survival and seeks to use as a bargaining chip in international diplomacy.

This, added to its ability to manufacture and launch long-range rockets, has repeatedly threatened the United States, a country it considers its arch-enemy, within the range of its nuclear strikes.

Its relations with South Korea, with which it has been in a technical state of war since 1953, have gone through phases of tension and détente, with signs of reconciliation but also frequent threats and specific military clashes that have never escalated seriously.

Kim has taken advantage of the distance with the United States, his two allies in the region, Russia and China, to improve relations with them, particularly with Moscow, which the Ukrainian government says has provided weapons despite a strict embargo. International sanctions.

Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, like its predecessors, is also characterized by poverty, starvation, and extreme secrecy about all information entering and leaving the country, especially about its political elite.

So there are key questions about North Korea’s supreme leader and his country’s governance that have no definitive answers.

Here we try to answer some of them.

1. When was Kim Jong-un born?

Actually, we don’t know with absolute certainty.

“There is widespread debate about whether he was born in 1982, 1983 or 1984,” Edward Howell, a professor of politics at Oxford University and one of the foremost experts on hermetic North Korea, explained to the BBC.

His birthday, January 8, is a normal weekday in North Korea, unlike the anniversaries of his father and grandfather.

Kim Jong-il’s birthday is celebrated annually on 16 February as Bright Star Day, while Kim Il Sung’s birthday is on 15 April as Sun Day. Both countries have important holidays. Communist.

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